Broken glass, messages of hope: What's different in Vancouver one year later? (with video)

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Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson has two lingering memories of the Stanley Cup Riot in the hours after drunk hooligans laid waste to his downtown.

One is of walking through deserted streets over broken glass, past looted shops and around derelict, burnt-out cars, the pungent smell of tear gas still lingering in the air. He wondered how his city could descend into such hell, and all around a hockey game, especially when just a year before it had been the toast of the world for its peaceful hosting of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The other was formed a few hours later as dawn broke. Citizens unexpectedly reclaimed their shattered downtown armed with brooms, dustpans, bags and black felt markers. They swept and cleaned and left messages of hope on an impromptu shrine created from the plywood boarding covering the broken plate-glass windows of The Bay.

In a matter of hours, Robertson had seen Vancouverites go from their worst to their finest.

As the anniversary of the Stanley Cup Riot approaches, Robertson says he still can’t ignore the first memory, but he prefers to focus on the second. And he believes the riot has had a strangely cathartic effect, a recognition that while we can darkly go there in the blink of an eye, we know now what triggers such behaviour and can avoid trouble before it hits.

It’s the modern version of “here be dragons.”

“I think, even for Vancouverites, it shattered the myth that this is some perfect Lotus Land city. Vancouver is a big city now, with real-world problems, and we need to be proactive and strident in protecting what we have here, and that’s what we did,” Robertson said.

In the year after the riot there has been much accounting of the damage done, both physically and psychologically. When alcohol-fuelled hooligans packed into cramped outdoor street venues and rioted over the team’s Game 7 loss to the Boston Bruins, they began an evening of mayhem for which the final tally is not yet known.

But so far, we know this: after mounting an unprecedented public identification campaign that even included seizing media images, police have so far recommended 592 charges against 200 rioters, including the overarching and serious charge of participating in a riot. As of this week, Crown counsel has approved 276 charges against 104 people, and a small handful have entered guilty pleas.

Police say at least 112 businesses were looted or vandalized. Some businesses were so trashed they required months of reconstruction.

At least 122 vehicles were damaged or destroyed, a third of which belonged to police.

At least $3.4 million in damage was recorded, and police have spent another $2 million on overtime in the operation of its special Integrated Riot Investigation Team. The in-kind cost of police departments contributing to that team is more than $8 million.

Last year’s riot happened almost exactly 17 years after the 1994 riot, which saw cars and stores vandalized and clashes with police after 70,000 people gathered downtown following the Canucks’ loss to the New York Rangers in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.

The 2011 riot sparked a lot of soul-searching and no less than four reviews, including an independent investigation by former Nova Scotia deputy attorney-general Doug Keefe and former Vancouver Olympic committee boss John Furlong. There were also reviews by the city and two for the police department, including one by Ottawa Police Services, and an internal review by the fire department.

The examinations all stopped short of a formal inquiry, largely, city manager Penny Ballem says, because such a process could have resulted in “swinging the pendulum too far.” The city would have risked going back to its “no-fun” label, she said.

What came out of all this was a clear understanding that the city and its partners miscalculated the potential for violence when more than 150,000 people responded to the call to come downtown to celebrate. There were other operational failures in key places, such as the inability to stop the influx of alcohol and SkyTrain’s contributing factor in dropping thousands of people into a crowded area.

“I think although we had five reviews of this they were all very practical and we were really able to think about where we have gaps in our practice that we needed to buff up a bit,” she said.

As a result of the chaos, at least in Vancouver, public events are now much more scrutinized and regimented. The city created a “City Large Events Oversight Committee” that now reviews all aspects of any public event of significance. Regional police agencies, with Transit Police at the core, also created a regional large-event policing strategy that requires police departments to contribute officers to any enforcement action.

“The big lesson we learned is that we can’t do this by ourselves,” said Insp. Rick McKillican, the operations chief for Transit Police. “We have to cooperate with others and share knowledge and information.”

The propensity for alcohol to fuel violence is no longer overlooked; the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority began a binge drinking education program, and the Canucks began a public campaign using key players to instil pride in the city.

Last year’s Grey Cup was the first major test of CLEOC and the fact it went off without a hitch is held up as validation of the city’s new principles, Ballem said.

But the changes also mean smaller community events are put under a microscope. As is the case whenever a traumatic event takes place, there is potential for bureaucratic over-reaction.

“I do have some concerns that these changes are having a collateral effect on the small festivals that are heavily dependent upon volunteers,” said Coun. Geoff Meggs. He cited the case of Car-Free Vancouver, a non-profit group that annually organizes the temporary closure of several streets to promote community events.

Maddy Kipling, the chairwoman of Car-Free Vancouver, says she understands the city’s need to be vigilant, but believes the new post-riot rules have become a bureaucratic headache. For the first time in seven years of uneventful planning, many members of her board have had to book days off work to complete the new raft of paperwork the city wants before it will issue a permit.

“They gave us a numerous-page, really in-depth emergency plan and it really looked like something for a large uber-conference,” she said. “We’ve had to write many-paged safety plans of the demographics and everything. This is a community festival filled with children and their mothers and fathers and seniors. It is not like a beer-guzzling sports event.”

But Peter Judd, Vancouver’s chief engineer, said it’s only prudent to expect organizers of any event that affects traffic or neighbourhoods — or that involves the provision of alcohol — to know their level of risk and have plans for traffic management and security.

The city isn’t about to put the hundreds of block party applications it gets every year under a microscope, but public events that affect major thoroughfares or business districts must undergo some risk assessment, he said.

Robertson understands Kipling’s concerns and says the city is still in “the learning phase.”

“It’s been a year of developing new approaches and some growing pains are inevitable. We will see this settle down so that we don’t impact smaller groups and organizations. But we do need to take precautions and make sure that events are well-planned,” he said.

Patrick Condon, a University of B.C. professor specializing in livable environments, said it’s likely city bureaucracy will over-react in an effort to prevent another riot. But he doesn’t think it will approach a “Homeland Security mentality.”

“Were an incident like this to happen again, citizens would be right to be entirely outraged at the incapacity of the city, the police, the mayor and the council to learn from their mistakes,” Condon said.

For his part, Robertson believes the city and his administration have already learned that lesson.

“I believe Vancouver is more mature and self-aware coming through [this] series of huge events, from the riot to the groundswell of public support that came right after that and completely countered the chaos of June 15,” he said. “It is an important part of our history that we came through gracefully despite the challenges.”

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Broken glass, messages of hope: What's different in Vancouver one year later? (with video)

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